24 August 2017 Angontsy to Nosy Hara, Madagascar (Day 1)
The wind dropped during the night, so we were swinging about, making it a bouncy, rolly night with the swell slapping against the stern of the boat.
We spent the day doing a few chores. Having a reasonable internet connection, I did some admin and reconciled our bank accounts and credit cards. I then did some research into anchorages around Madagascar and created an article in the Cruising Notes section of our web site. It’s mostly a concatenation of other cruisers blogs for each of the anchorages.
Meanwhile the villagers were getting on with their lives. Some were paddling about in their dugout canoes with a hand line, while others were out with nets. One group were laying nets in a circle from the shore and then hauling it in. Glenys had dug out half a dozen bags of things to give or trade with them, but we were surprised that no-one approached our boat.
We called one fisherman over and gave him the head and carcass of the tuna that I filleted yesterday – it will make a good meal. He was very reticent to approach our boat and didn’t speak much French, so communication was difficult. I wish that we’d gone ashore now.
By 15:00, we were tired of waiting and sailed out of the anchorage. There was a SE 10-12 knot wind, so we were on a broad reach only doing 4 knots through the water, but with a favourable current, we were making 5.5 knots over the ground, which is fast enough to get us to the cape at the north of the island by dawn the day after tomorrow. In fact, I’m worried that we’ll be going too fast and we’ll have to heave-to while we wait for the optimal tides.
The tidal flow around Cap d’Ambre floods north at up to 3 knots. With 20-25 knot winds from the south-east, we want to make sure that we’re rounding the cape at slack tide or when the tide is rising. Attempting it when the tide is falling (when the tidal current is flowing south), would be very unpleasant with the waves building up because of the effect of wind against current.
High water is at 08:00 and low water is at 13:30, so we have two choices – aim to round the cape at 08:00, which might be a struggle if the wind drops tonight, or aim for 13:30. We decided it would be safer to go around at 13:30 because it’s easier to slow down than speed up.
I’ve created a waypoint, which is where we want to be at 11:00 on Saturday (12°03.45S 49°21.58E). This waypoint is the start of our planned route to round the cape – it’s 10 miles from the cape and only ½ mile offshore, where we’re hoping the waves will be smaller. Hopefully, we’ll be able to adjust our speed tomorrow.
We started the passage with the genoa and the main out to port, but soon after dark, the wind had veered by 30 degrees, so I poled the genoa out to starboard, so that we were wing-on-wing. The wind continued to veer and by 01:00, we were being forced east of our route, so we gybed the main, so that both sails were out to starboard. The wind is 30 degrees more west than forecast.
We had a new moon, but it soon disappeared and left us with a clear sky with a brilliant display of stars. The temperature plummeted when the sun went down, so I spent the night wearing a fleece and a windproof jacket.
25 August 2017 Angontsy to Nosy Hara, Madagascar (Day 2)
By 07:00, we’d done 85 miles at an average of 5.3 knots. The wind had picked up overnight and we were doing 6 knots over the ground. We only had 130 miles to go to my Waypoint, so if we maintained 6 knots, we’d be rounding the cape 6 hours too early. We needed to slow down, so I rolled away the main sail and reduced the genoa to a tiny scrap of sail, which dropped our speed to 2 knots. The plan was to sail slowly during the day and then have an easily achievable speed over night.
After breakfast, I went to make a cup of tea and I found that the cooker wasn’t swinging on its gimbal. The cooker is suspended on two small stainless steel fittings with a diameter of only 4mm and one of them has sheared off. This has happened before and I know that I have some spares, but it’s a fiddly 4 hour job and I can’t do it at sea. Glenys is going to have to struggle with dinner tonight.
We slopped along all day with a boat speed of 2 knots, but by 16:00, we’d still covered 34 miles in 8 hours – an average of 4.25 knots. There’s obviously a 2-3 knot current pushing us along and the wind is going to increase as we approach the compression zone around the headland, so we realised that we’re going to struggle to slow down any more.
Time to have a rethink. We had 90 miles to go to the Waypoint, if we could average 6.4 knots, which should be easily achievable with the 2-3 knot current, then we’d arrive at the Waypoint in 14 hours, at 06:00, which would put us at the cape just before at High Water. Sounds like a better plan than slopping around all night - the boat feels wrong going at 2 knots. We pulled out the main sail with two reefs; unfurled the genoa and set off at 6.4 knots speed over the ground. It felt so much better.
It always takes the boat a few minutes to get into the groove and settle down, so when we checked ten minutes later, we were doing 7.5-8 knots over the ground. Give me strength! We rolled away some of the genoa and tried again... By sunset, the wind had picked up to SE 20 knots, so we rolled away the mainsail and leaving us with just a heavily reefed genoa – it’s so hard to slow down. We spent the rest of the night adjusting the genoa to maintain a constant speed.
26 August 2017 Angontsy to Nosy Hara, Madagascar (Day 3)
Glenys woke me at 05:30, just as the sun came up. I’d had a slightly shorter off-watch sleep, but I wanted to be up for the last ten miles in case it was really rough. We passed through our Waypoint at 06:30 – a little late, but we had 20-25 knots of wind and would make it to the headland in time for slack water. The seas were 2 metres and became steeper as we approached the headland.
We sailed around the coast, starting off at 1 mile offshore, but gradually sneaking in to ½ mile as we passed the lighthouse. There were some impressive looking explosions of water as the large waves pounded the fringing reef. We’ve seen Humpback Whales every day that we’ve been in Madagascar and today was no exception - we had a dozen sightings while rounding the cape with whales leaping out of the water and tail splashing, obviously enjoying the waves.
It wasn’t too bad - we still had some current with us, so we were doing 6-7 knots over the ground until we passed the lighthouse. The wind continued to blow from the south-east, but gradually increased as we turned the corner and unfortunately, the current switched to be against us. It was frustrating to be battling against a three knot current - at times we were only doing three knots over the ground. As we headed south-west, the waves and the counter-current gradually decreased and we were able to make better time, but the wind picked up to 30 knots, so it was a wet ride.
It was only 4 miles to Mpaninabo Bay, where we dropped the sails and motored into the entrance. The Navionics charts show that there is a very narrow channel, but this proved to be wrong and we have 20 metres depth in a channel over 100 metres wide. The wind was still howling and we were motoring straight into it. To add to our woes, the tide was ebbing out of the large harbour and we had current against us, so we were only making 2.5 knots.
It was just over two miles to the place that I’d ear-marked as a reasonable anchorage, so it was going to take us an hour to go to have a look. The area around the bay was very bleak and if the anchorage was no good then the next good anchorage was 20 miles away, so we’d be having another long day. We decided to cut our losses and continue heading south, looking for a sheltered anchorage.
We were on a beam reach, with the wind gusting up to 35 knots, so we only pulled out the staysail, which was enough. On the way, we contacted “Red Herring” on the VHF and found that they’d anchored at a small island called Nosy Hao overnight, but they’d had 30 knots of wind and were bouncing about a little. They’d left for Nosy Hara, which we’d heard was a National Park and the park wardens were charging 55,000 Ariary (£14) per person per night, so we decided to have a look at Nosy Hao.
After negotiating our way through a channel in a reef, we found ourselves faced with a one mile bash directly into the wind. We rolled away the sails and motored directly into the wind, but it was hard work and the island looked very low with little protection from the howling wind. “Red Herring” called us to say that the anchorage in Nosy Hara was very calm and well protected, so we turned 90 degrees and sailed 8 miles south.
As expected, the wind dropped completely as we sailed into the wind shadow on the west side of the high, rocky island. However, as we sailed towards the bay, the wind switched to the south-west at about ten knots making the anchorage a little bouncy. We can’t win today…
I’m guessing that this south-west wind is caused by the strong Sea-Breeze effect in this area. During the afternoon, when the land is hotter than the sea, the air rises from the land causing the lower air to flow in from the sea (a Sea-Breeze). At night, as the land cools down, the air rises from the sea and the lower air flows from the land to the sea (a Land-Breeze).
We can expect this effect all the way down this coast of Madagascar, it will be more pronounced in certain areas depending on the shape of the coast. In some areas, the Land-Breeze enhances the prevailing south-east winds, so there are strong off-shore winds at night. Other cruisers have recommended anchoring on the west side of any island, which will be bouncy and exposed to the Sea-Breeze in the afternoon, but in the evening, it will calm down and be well protected from the stronger Land-Breeze during the night. By seven o’clock, it was calm in this anchorage.
We dropped our anchor in the bay of Nosy Hara at 12°14.51S 049°00.27E in 8 metres on sand. As soon as we’d settled, a small boat came out from the beach with three guys, who wanted us to pay the National Park fees of 55,000 Ariary (£14) per person per night. They didn’t speak any English, so I argued in my very poor French that we’d just sailed from Ile St Marie and were just looking for shelter for the night. I said that we wouldn’t be going ashore and would leave first thing in the morning, so I wasn’t going to pay. They gave up and went over to see the other boats - “Jackster” bribed them with a case of beer and “Red Herring” were out snorkelling.
We had an early night.
27 August 2017 Nosy Hara to Andranoaombi Bay
After breakfast, we upped anchor and sailed over to The Cathedral, which is a set of small craggy islands only 2.5 miles from Nosy Hara. We anchored off a nice looking beach on a small island at 12°15.63S 048°57.68E in 16m on sand.
After getting the dinghy off the deck and starting the outboard, we headed off to the beach and walked on land for the first time in six days. On the other side of the narrow island, we found eight guys in a fishing camp, some were sleeping under bushes, but a couple were making breakfast cooking small fish in a frying pan over a wood fire. Not many of the locals around here speak French, never mind English, but we managed to find out that they come from Diego Suarez and stay out here fishing.
There wasn’t much else to see on the beach and the steep hillside is covered with thorny bushes, so we gave up and went snorkelling. We wore our new 1mm full length wet suits, but we were getting a little chilly after 30 minutes. The Reef was in very good condition, with no sign of bleaching. The fish were mostly very cautious and I saw no sign of grouper, snapper or other “game” fish, so I guess that there’s been lot of fishing here. I did see a few Clarke's Anemonefish and there were a lot of Moon Jellyfish around. I struggled to remember how to take underwater photographs after a three month layoff.
“Red Herring” called us on the VHF radio when we arrived back on the boat. They’d gone ashore at Nosy Hara and paid one person’s ticket because they weren’t carrying enough money. Apparently, the wardens were cross with us for not paying and have reported us to their headquarters. We may get hassle from the Coastguard further down the coast at Helleville. Goodness knows what we might get fined, but I’ll just have to argue that it was a misunderstanding and we thought that we didn’t have to pay because we didn’t stay long.
Apparently, the National Park stretches all the way from Cap D’Ambre to Cap St Sebastian, which is a 45 mile stretch of coast - a huge area. The Cathedral is part of the National Park, so we decided to leave the area and sail past Cap St Sebastian to Andranoaombi Bay. It was a pleasant sail, fairly hard on the wind and we arrived at 17:00, anchoring off a small village at 12°26.83S 048°46.25E in 7 metres of thick mud. We passed another three villages on our way in.
While we were anchoring, a guy turned up in his dug-out canoe. Interestingly, here they have a rough, but functional outrigger to give the boat stability. The guy came to trade with a bunch of bananas and some green coconuts. We weren’t quite ready for trading, so I was dragging out bags and grabbing stuff. We eventually gave him a t-shirt and some fishing hooks and he promised to bring us some Mud Crabs tomorrow.
Three other boats then followed with bananas, plantains and not much else. Most didn’t speak any French apart from one eleven year old girl, who spoke very good French. She was very good at negotiating and extracted a couple of t-shirts, fishing hooks, some fishing line, a pencil and a packet of biscuits for “Les Enfants”. She had a beaming smile and is going to be a force to be reckoned with when she grows up.
28 August 2017 Andranoaombi Bay to Nosy Mitsio
We had some kind of squall go through in the middle of the night, turning the calm peaceful anchorage into a bouncy one as the wind picked up to 20+ knots from the south - straight up the long harbour. I had to get up to check the anchor chain, but we had 40 metres out in 8 metres of water, so we had a good 5:1 scope. An hour later the wind suddenly switched off, but we had no rain - weird.
I was up at 07:00 and peeked out of the window to find a local guy hovering about waiting for us to appear. I lurked below for an hour, until Glenys had woken up and we’d had breakfast. The guy turned out to be Chief Jean Pierre from the main village, which is down at the entrance to the bay - a 1.3 mile paddle. We had a chat with him and he invited us to visit his village, to which we said we’d be there a bit later.
We spent the next hour putting together a bag of goodies to trade with them. When I say “Trade”, I really mean “give” because these people are so poor that we are really donating much more than we are receiving.
The village is next to a sandy beach at 12°28.01S 048°46.73E. We pulled our dinghy onto the beach and wandered into the village, asking for “Le Chef” or “Jean Pierre”, but it took us a couple of minutes to find a young man who spoke some French and finally twigged who we were looking for. (We were later told that the Malagasy word for Chief is “Fokotany”). He lead us deep into the village past numerous grass huts, with ladies pounding grain in huge mortars and rice laid out on mats to dry.
We found Jean Pierre digging charcoal from his Charcoal Pits. The villagers create a fire using any type of hard wood and when it’s roaring away, they cover it with something like a piece of iron shheting or leaves and then pile on some earth. The idea is to restrict the amount of oxygen, allowing the embers burn without flames. The carbonisation process continues overnight and the next day the villagers can dig up the resulting charcoal, which they use for cooking. I guess that each family has its own set of charcoal pits.
Jean Pierre led us back to his house, which is rather grand for the village, with corrugated iron walls and roof. We met his wife and some of their seven children, who range from three years old to twenty. They gave us some honey collected from wild bees. It didn’t look very appetising, being in a scruffy, old Coca Cola bottle, but we graciously accepted it. They said that they would get us some duck eggs.
We chatted for a while and they asked if we had various things. The most unexpected item was an SD card for their mobile phone and a spare battery. There is no telephone signal in the village, but they seem to use their phones as a camera and a music player. I don’t even have an SD card in my phone, so I couldn’t help them.
After a while, we said that we wanted to give them some things, so we were invited into their small home. The whole building is about 5 metres * 5 metres, spilt into two rooms by a corrugated iron wall. One room is a bedroom, full of bedding laid out on the floor and the other room is split again into two by a long curtain from ceiling to floor. One half acts as the living area and behind the curtain was a wood-framed double bed and some storage boxes.
The living room was only 2.5 metres by 2.5 metres, but it had a very grand looking sideboard and three arm chairs. I expressed admiration for the side board and Jean Pierre proudly showed us his DVD Player sat on top of the sideboard, insisting on playing a DVD, which attracted a small crowd of kids. The DVD player is powered by a 12V car battery and an inverter. They have a solar panel on the roof which charges the battery. They are obviously relatively wealthy.
It was fun handing out the various gifts - the room was packed with us, mum and dad, six little kids and three teenage lads hovering by the door. Jean Pierre nearly took my hand off when I presented him with a torch. He was delighted that it was a wind-up torch that doesn’t need batteries. His wife was pleased with the few cans of food and powdered milk; the teenage sons liked the fish hooks and line that I’d packaged together.
The kids munched on a few biscuits that we brought out, while mum grabbed them to try on some of the kids clothes that we’d brought. Some old webbing, a screwdriver, tooth brushes and tooth paste quickly disappeared into willing hands. The piece de resistance was pair of £2 reading glasses. Jean Pierre tried them on and was delighted when he could read, so was his wife - there’ll be some sharing going on.
Jean Pierre owns the village shop, which is a corrugated hut containing one set of shelves and piles of essential stuff like buckets, bowls, cooking oil, a few crates of beer, some tins of food and cigarettes. Occasionally during our visit, a villager or child would turn up and Jean Pierre would walk to the store to sell a few cigarettes or pour some cooking oil into the villager’s container.
After a while, I showed Jean Pierre a photograph of a chameleon and told him that I’d like to see one. He then took us for a walk around the village into his large garden to search one out. We walked past Zebu pens, which belonged to Jean Pierre and then entered his fenced-off garden, which contained Banana, Coconut, Lime, Orange, Jack fruit and Mango trees. There were other trees with strange looking fruits - all in all an impressive garden.
We didn’t find a Chameleon, but they spotted a small Madagascar Owl, sleeping in a low tree. I sneaked up and trying not to disturb it, took a couple of photos. One of Jean Pierre’s older sons, then grabbed hold of the bird to give us a closer look - there’s no concept of leaving wildlife untouched here. The poor owl had an abrupt awakening and looked suitably shocked, but we soon released it and it flew away to find a better perch.
On the way back to his house, Jean Pierre showed us one of the village’s six Wells. The roughly dug hole was about two metres in diameter and two metres deep. The water level was about one metre below ground level and he told us that in the rainy season the well can overflow. He pulled out a bucket of water and it looked very clean - it's a good job because the wells are the main source of drinking water for the whole village.
Back at Jean Pierre’s house, his wife asked Glenys if she had any moisturising cream. Glenys said she had, so after we’d said our goodbyes, Jean Pierre and one of his older sons followed us back to Alba. We invited them on board, gave them a cold drink and showed them down below. They enjoyed their visit, but soon set off to paddle the 1.3 miles into the strong wind.
By this time, it was nearly noon and the anchorage was very bouncy, with a 15 knot wind coming straight down the harbour, so we decided to head off to Nosy Mitsio, some 30 miles away. The wind was unkind to us for the first hour - we were hard on the wind and being forced 30 degrees off course. However, the sea-breeze veered as we left the peninsula and, after a couple of hours, we were able to hold a course directly to our destination.
We arrived in Nosy Mitsio just before sunset and anchored at 12°54.48S 048°34.70E in 8 metres on good holding sand. We collapsed and had fried Duck Eggs for dinner, which were fabulous.
29 August 2017 Nosy Mitsio, Madagascar
It’s been a bit hectic for the past few days, so we had a quiet day on-board. Glenys made some bread and I caught up on editing my photos and my blog. There’s a very sketchy internet signal here - good enough for emails but not much else.
I ran the water maker, but the low pressure pump cut out several times and even stalled the high pressure pump at one point. Air is being sucked into the 20 and 5 micron pre-filters, so I gave up after fifteen minutes.
After lunch, I did some serious investigation and traced the water pipes all the way from the seacock. There’s a t-joint just after the seacock which goes off to the salt water deck wash pump and I found air in the filter for that pump - we don’t use it very often. I ran it to purge the air and then continued along the pipe work, tightening up hose clips as I went.
I ran the low pressure pump and it worked OK allowing me to bleed air out of the pre-filters. I then tried to run the high pressure pump, but it wouldn’t start - it just hummed. I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach - I’ve buggered it up. In panic, I tried it three more times - Hum, Hum and Hummm. This was a disaster, where were we going to get drinking water from?
I sat back and thought through what I’d done to the system. I’d only messed with the pipework, so what could be causing the problem? The low pressure pump worked, but the high pressure pump didn’t… Duhhh! I’d not started our 220V generator. Our inverter will drive the low pressure pump, but there’s not enough power to run the larger 220V motor on the water maker. I started the generator and everything worked. Phew - just a Senior Moment.
I ran the water maker for an hour. The low pressure water pump cut out a few times, but I was able to fill up our water tanks to brimming. I need to replace the low-water pressure pump at some point, but it’s going to take at least 11 days to get on shipped from Trinidad and then it might be held up by customs for weeks. We’ll probably be in Richard’s Bay in South Africa in six weeks’ time, so I’ll have to make do.
30 August 2017 Nosy Mitsio, Madagascar
We had a bit of a holiday today and sailed three miles to Nosy Ankerea anchoring at 12°50.73S 048°34.95E right next to a white sand beach in 8 metres of water on good holding sand. It was a bit rolly with a swell coming from the south-west and hooking around the island, but it we were only there for the day.
We went for a snorkel on the north side of the island, which was fairly good. The coral was in good condition, but there weren’t many fish - obviously a good fishing spot for the locals. After lunch, we went for a short walk on the beach. There’s the remains of a resort that closed down, but not much else of note. We then went snorkelling in a slightly different place while was similar to the morning
After sailing back to the main anchorage, “Jackster” invited us over for sundowners with Gary and Jackie from “Inspiration Lady”, who arrived today after a six night sail from Mauritius.
31 August 2017 Nosy Mitsio, Madagascar
The weather has been beautiful for the past few days, with blue skies and gentle breezes and today was another cracker, but it was time to get on with some boat maintenance. Glenys pottered about doing some washing, while I removed the cooker to repair the broken gimbal.
It wasn’t too bad a job. I’d had some spare gimbal “posts” made the last time that this happened, a couple of years ago. The broken gimbal was the original manufacturer’s one, which was press-fitted into the side of the cooker, so I had to remove the side panel and grind out the broken stud. After that, it was a simple job of bolting the two new gimbal posts into the side panels.
Meanwhile Glenys had given the cooker and the space into which it fits a damn good cleaning. There are places that are impossible to clean when the cooker is installed, so it was a pretty disgusting job.
I had the cooker reinstalled soon after lunch, so I spent the rest of the afternoon doing some smaller jobs - rewiring the 12 volt sockets in the cockpit and tidying up the wiring for our media player and TV projector.
The locals don’t seem to be bothered to trade with us. We’ve had a couple of canoes call by asking for things, but not bringing anything out. We’ve handed out a few small items like pencils and paper for kids and one guy wanted a dive mask. He showed me a horribly scratched mask, so I gave him a good mask and asked him to bring us some lobster or bananas. He never came back and we found out later that he’d scammed a mask from “Red Herring” as well, so I’m a little cross with him.
There are more photos in our Photo Album section.
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